1) Human Trafficking in Washington State: The Difficulties in Locating and Prosecuting Traffickers

Jasmine Singh

Open up a newspaper, tune into television news, or read the headlines online. How often is it that you read or listen to reports about trafficking victims or their enslavers? Such news accounts are rare even though many traffickers practice their trade throughout the country freely. In an effort to stem its proliferation, Washington State was the first of the fifty states to take action at the local level on prosecuting traffickers.[1]

“I hear that over and over and over again: hotspot, hotspot, hotspot.”[2] Kathleen Morris from the Washington Anti-Trafficking Response Network (WARN) states in her speech on how the U.S. government Department of Justice acknowledges the prime agriculturally-rich location of Eastern Washington as being an active center of known traffickers.[3] While Washington has tried a tough stance to prosecute traffickers, legal complications results in fewer convictions in trafficking. Changes are continuously made to trafficking laws due to satisfy varying ideologies between feminist activists and faith-based groups when held in comparison to international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) fighting for human rights. Furthermore, the ability to plea out of charges and add additional charges onto others creates variation in penalties among traffickers due to the ambiguousness of the anti-trafficking law. The primary reason for lack of prosecution of traffickers, however, results from the inability to identify victims and the lack of sufficient evidence to prosecute the traffickers.

Slavery Transcending Through Time
In the early nineteenth century, slaves were widely accepted as a tradable commodity, so slave owners had no fear in publicizing the number of slaves they possessed.[4] The main strategybehind the violence against the slaves was to strip them of any thoughts of escape.[5] While cruel punishment and violence were common throughout history and continue to be a tool used on slaves today, there are other significant differences in the treatment between slaves of the past and slaves of the present.

After the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the Thirteenth Amendment of 1865,[6] slavery was legally abolished, or so the law stated. In reality, slavery was simply abolished from view of the general public.[7] The traffickers imposed conditions on their subjects as a way to protect themselves and avoid prosecution. This resulted in the observed statistics of low conviction rates. “I worked for so many hours without getting paid… And I couldn’t leave. I feel like they stole my life from me”[8] is the mentality of many slaves and the reason they fear speaking up to officials about their conditions.

Prosecuting Traffickers Requires Having a Definition of Trafficking
Human trafficking has been broken down into two main categories: sex trafficking and labor trafficking. Sex trafficking is defined as “Commercial sex act induced by force, fraud or coercion; or in which the person induced to perform such act is under age 18.”[9] Labor trafficking is defined as “Using force, fraud or coercion to recruit, harbor, transport, provide, or obtain a person for labor or services in involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.”[10]

In the case of sex trafficking as an example, there are two contradicting ideologies that speak out as to what should be done about the problem. The first ideology is that of the feminist activists and faith-based groups who believe prostitution is a form of sex trafficking regardless of self-employment or forced action. Their belief revolves around the position that no woman would ever choose to be a prostitute. Prostitution occurs solely due to either financial hardship or deceit.[11] By following and creating law based on this belief, it would be much easier to locate and capture pimps. With a more localized law about the illegality of prostitution, people and police forces may be more prone to search for and arrest prostitutes. They would provide a helpful lead in confiscating pimps. The other side isn’t so bright for the prostitute though. Since law would show that they are committing a crime, prostitutes, whether forced or not, would be arrested and sentenced. This increases fear in their eyes, so subsequently the prostitutes would be unwilling to reveal themselves.

The second ideology on how to address sex trafficking consists of the views of international NGOs which focus more on human rights. Their beliefs shift focus away from criminalizing prostitution and assert that prostitution should be legalized.[12] The benefits of this would be that women are given more freedom of choice and prostitution may be less disgraceful in the eyes of the general public. In addition, the woman in financial need could find a way to earn an acceptable living and so would be less prone to being deceived by manipulative traffickers. On the other hand, commonplace prostitution would also make it more difficult to catch pimps. In order to protect themselves, the pimps may force their prostitutes to merely claim that they are self-employed. Since prostitution would be legal, no one would be at liberty to question the prostitute’s activities, and so the pimps would not be prosecuted.
Constant debate occurs between these two ideologies and each believes the law should be modified to fit their image. The result is ambiguity in the law and personal preference in the views of its implementation.

Washington State’s unique attempt to localize: Federal to state law
In October of 2000, the United States’ government approved and signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) into law. “The purposes of this division are to combat trafficking in persons…to ensure just and effective punishment of traffickers, and to protect their victims.”[13] By not defining trafficking explicitly or all possible cases, some cases were allowed to slip through the cracks.
As time passed, additions and revises were put on the TVPA to form the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005, and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. As of 2011, revisions are ongoing to encompass more instances of trafficking and for better prosecution.[14] The fact that the revisions even had to take place illustrate that there were loopholes and/or the Act didn’t fully encompass all possibilities and thus failed to protect all human trafficking victims.

Washington State, in particular, has always been known as a hotspot for trafficking victims due to its large agricultural output in Eastern Washington. The state government decided to combat this well-known issue and produced its own anti-trafficking law. In 2003, “Washington [State] enacted historic legislation: the first state level criminal statute on human trafficking.”[15] Why then, we must question, was the first prosecution under this law in 2009, six years after its signing.

What Caused Washington State to Take Action?
Velma Veloria, Seattle's 11th District House representative and one of the first Filipino American state legislators, was motivated by two trafficking cases that led her to introduce the anti-trafficking bill in Washington State. In 1995, Susanna Blackwell, a Filipino mail-ordered bride was murdered in the King County Court after attempting to divorce her spouse. She was mentally and physically abused and had searched for a way out, but was murdered in her attempt to escape.[16] Unfortunately, there had been many similar cases that were not brought to justice. The bill was Washington State’s contribution and acknowledgment of the traffickers they held in their own midst. After experiencing such a highly publicized case, there was a large uproar from the greater public. This was the ideal time for the introduction of a bill against human trafficking.

In support for the bill, Hai-Tri Le, a Microsoft Corp. Employee, spoke about his experience in "‘A garment factory near Indonesia. Established in 1999 in American Samoa, a territory of the United States.’"[17] Le speaks about the labor abuse that many workers received ranging from violence and rape to breaking of promises and starvation. After a lengthy trial the court ruled that “Kil Soo Lee, the former owner of an American Samoa garment factory…[served] 40 years in prison for involuntary servitude and trafficking, ending one chapter in the largest such case ever prosecuted on U.S. soil.”[18]

Cases like these were what Veloria hoped would be stopped in the state of Washington. She wanted traffickers to receive a stiff sentence, and their exploitation to come an end. It was however not that simple. One still has to locate traffickers. The law, being quite ambiguous, also requires finding sufficient evidence against traffickers in order to prosecute them.

The Famous First Prosecution under Washington State’s “New” Law
In 2009, a young man by the name of Deshawn “Cash Money” Clark was sent to trial and prosecuted under Washington’s 2003 anti-trafficking law. Clark was a West Seattle Pimp who had held three girls captive and forced them into prostitution. Two of these girls were minors. Clark was “sentenced to a 17-year prison term following convictions on human trafficking and child prostitution charges.”[19]

This conviction under the Washington State anti-trafficking law occurred six years after being signed. One is left to question why it took so long for the first human trafficking prosecution to take place. While the TVPA has many resources, and therefore more prosecutions, the state level anti-trafficking law has fewer resources. Unfortunately, what is found in most cases is that the people who are enslaved have too much fear to speak up and testify against their enslavers. Clark’s brother had described the process of obtaining these women, however, and his family had pleaded guilty.[20] This was a major piece of information in the prosecution of Deshawn Clark.

This case demonstrates quite a few things about the law, one being lack of evidence against the defendant results in the lack of prosecutions of traffickers, and the second being lack in resources. The prosecution under state law took six years and was sexual in nature. The former part of the previous statement illustrates error or ambiguity lies in the law. The latter emphasizes the strong reaction people hold when hearing “sex” trafficking.

Several More Human Trafficking Cases
Many human trafficking cases exist in Washington State today. Many however aren’t charged under Washington State law, and some weren’t even charged under the TVPA. One example given is when Chomphoonut Dongird is sentenced in 2009 with 51 months for “Transporting Thai [women]…for sex trade at massage parlors.” Dongird wasn’t charged for human trafficking even though he should have due to forced sexual exploitation. Bringing women from Thailand and forcing them into sex work resulted only in a “transporting” sentence.[21] This holds true in many trafficking cases where enough evidence isn’t provided or the trafficker finds a way out of being criminalized as a trafficker.

Sex trafficking is what attracts public attention the most for various reasons; however it is not the most prominent type of slavery in Washington State. In 2008, a man by the name of Ramon Maldonado got charged with a twelve month prison sentence for “Aiding and Abetting the Smuggling of an Illegal Alien.”[22] Another case is of Jian Zhong Tang who was sentenced to ten months in prison for “Harboring illegal aliens.”[23] This man had trafficking and bought illegal immigrants. These people were forced to work long hours in a restaurant with little or no pay. This case also ended with the trafficker receiving no sentence for actually trafficking.

Even though these are a couple cases that represent the difficulty in actually prosecuting traffickers, there have been successful prosecutions. Many aren’t prosecuted under the state law, however, due to a lack of resources.[24] Most are prosecuted under the TVPA. Those that are not criminalized for trafficking normally escape from lack of evidence. The majority of cases have not been publicized completely due to confidentiality. Each case represents the same basic elements though: the vulnerable become the victim and are forced to into servitude and fear escaping.[25] The enslaver has “programmed to fear outside contact” on the victim.[26] Because of this fear to speak out and reach for help, few traffickers are located and prosecuted. The severity of the human trafficking problem can never be determined since the magnitude cannot be determined.[27]

So What Now?
The question in the final assessment comes down to what should be done in order to locate and prosecute as many traffickers as possible, and what should the penalty be. The obstacles one has to overcome in order to begin “the process of eradication are lack of awareness and lack of resources.”[28] While complete eradication of slavery seems like an impossible feat, awareness is a small step in decreasing the number of victims of trafficking. Never take anything at face value because victims tend to have a forced dependence on their traffickers, and so are unwilling to reveal themselves.

No longer do I want to be another person unaware of the realities of trafficking. Something I thought only existed many decades before my birth is found to be mainstream even today. Not only this, but prominent in my neighborhood. I now even question if the nanny in the house next door is a victim of trafficking, or the clothes I wear everyday are actually products from forced labor.

[1]"Human Trafficking." Office of Attorney General Rob McKenna. http://www.atg.wa.gov/HumanTrafficking.aspx (accessed Sept. 9, 2011).
[2]Lerner, Sarah. “Human Trafficking: Our Legislative History.” KUOW News, March 16, 2010.
[3]Ibid.
[4]Kevin Bales, Zoe Trod, and Alex Kent Williamson, Modern Slavery: the Secret World of 27 Million People (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), 3.
[5]Henry Louis Gates Jr, eds., The Classic Slave Narratives (New York: Signet Classics, 2002), 351.
[6]Alexander Tsesis, The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 7.
[7]Bales, Modern Slavery, 13.
[8]Kevin Bales and Zoe Trodd, To Plead Our Own Cause: Personal Stories by Today's Slaves, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 156.
[9]"Victims of Human Trafficking Have Rights," Washington Anti-Trafficking Response Network » WARN, http://warn-trafficking.org (accessed Sept. 9, 2011).
[10]Ibid.
[11]Bales, Modern Slavery, 74.
[12]Ibid., 75.
[13]House Committee on Government Reform, Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, 106th Cong., 2000, 4.
[14]U.S. Department of State, Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs, U.S. Laws on Trafficking in Persons, Bureau of Public Affairs, http://www.state.gov/g/tip/laws, (accessed Sept. 7, 2011).
[15]Lerner, “Human Trafficking: Our Legislative History.”
[16]Ibid.
[17]Ibid.
[18]Wong, Brad, “Largest U.S. human trafficking case leads to 40-year sentence,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jun. 28, 2005.
[19] Levi Pulkkinen, “Prison Term for Two Convicted in West Seattle Pimp Ring,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Apr. 8, 2010.
[20]Ibid.
[21]Ye-Ting Woo, Telephone interview, 6 Sept. 2011.
[22]Emily Langlie, Telephone interview, 6 Sept. 2011.
[23]Ibid.
[24]Kathleen Morris, Telephone interview, 6 Sept. 2011.
[25]Anthony DeStefano, The War on Human Trafficking: U.S. Policy Assessed (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 26.
[26]Bales, Modern Slavery, 160.
[27]Ronald Weitzer, “The Movement to Criminalize Sex Work in the United States,” Journal of Law and Society, no. 1 (2010): 67.
[28]Bales, Modern Slavery, 146.

Bibliography
Bales, Kevin, Zoe Trodd and Alex Kent Williamson. Modern Slavery: the Secret World of 27 Million People. Oxford: Oneworld, 2009.

Bales, Kevin and Zoe Trodd. To Plead Our Own Cause: Personal Stories by Today's Slaves. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.

DeStefano, Anthony. The War on Human Trafficking: U.S. Policy Assessed. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008.

Gates, Henry Louis Jr. eds. The Classic Slave Narratives. New York: Signet Classics, 2002.

"Human Trafficking." Office of Attorney General Rob McKenna. http://www.atg.wa.gov/HumanTrafficking.aspx. (accessed Sept. 9, 2011)

Langlie, Emily. Telephone interview. 6 Sept. 2011.

Lerner, Sarah. “Human Trafficking: Our Legislative History.” KUOW News, March 16, 2010.

Morris, Kathleen. Telephone interview. 6 Sept. 2011

Pulkkinen, Levi. “Prison Term for Two Convicted in West Seattle Pimp Ring.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Apr. 8, 2010.

Tsesis, Alexander. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History. New York: New York University Press, 2004.

U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Government Reform. Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. 106th Cong., October 28, 2000.

U.S. Department of State. Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs. U.S. Laws on Trafficking in Persons. Bureau of Public Affairs. http://www.state.gov/g/tip/laws. (accessed Sept. 7, 2011).

"Victims of Human Trafficking Have Rights." Washington Anti-Trafficking Response Network » WARN. http://warn-trafficking.org. (accessed Sept. 9, 2011).

Weitzer, Ronald. “The Movement to Criminalize Sex Work in the United States.” Journal of Law and Society, no. 1 (2010): 61-84.

Wong, Brad. “Largest U.S. human trafficking case leads to 40-year sentence.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jun. 28, 2005.

Woo, Ye-Ting. Telephone interview. 6 Sept. 2011.\

Wood, Carrie. “Human Trafficking Survivor on Set for Film Shooting.” Kirkland Reporter, Sept. 2, 2011.

2) Identify & Prevent

Savannah Romero

Based on my personal experience and from the things I have learned thus far in class; I strongly believe that education and awareness are the first step to prevention of human trafficking. Although I believe it is important for everyone to be educated on all forms of trafficking in persons, my group will be focusing mainly on sex trafficking. We have all decided to research specifically about sex trafficking in the Seattle area.

In my research project I will specifically examine where sex trafficking is occurring and where is it most prominent in the Seattle area. I want to be able to describe what it might look like if a person was a victim of sex trafficking and some signs that could be indicators to this crime. I will research what local officials and the local communities are doing to stop sex trafficking. I will also examine what we, as a local community, should be doing to help prevent it. I would specifically like to learn about what ways are effective in educating people in our community within different age groups, genders, ethnicities, and economic situations.

For my resources I plan to use news paper articles, various presentations by local officials, resource documents that have been made available for the public by anti-trafficking organizations, and testimonies of sex slavery victims. Some of the sources I have already come across in my research include a presentation called “King County’s Response to Child Sex Trafficking” by Terri Kimball, Director, Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention, City of Seattle Human Services Dept. This presentation talks about the urgency of the issue of sex trafficking and what we can/need to do to help prevent it. I plan to also use a document by Robert Moossy who is a federal prosecutor and director of the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. The document is titled, “Sex Trafficking: Identifying Cases and Victims.” Like the title clearly explains, this document is dedicated to identifying victims of sex trafficking.

We need to reach out to the people in our communities and educated them on how to identify trafficking so it can be more easily avoided and prevented. There are so many people that don’t have a clue that sex trafficking and other forms of human trafficking are going on right in front of them. If the public is educated then it will be easier for us to identify trafficking when we see it, which ultimately leads to less people being trafficked.

Sex trafficking in WA.docx

3) Prosecution of Sex Trafficking in Seattle

Katleiah Ramos

I will be researching the topics of law, politics, and prosecution of sex trafficking in Seattle. My research paper on the law created for human trafficking, how it came into being and continues to be changed and challenged today. I will research different cases to see what type of sentences those convicted face, and what happens for the victims when they face charges of illegal immigration or charges related to prostitution. I will also research goals the government and other organizations plan to work towards in the improvement of human trafficking laws and how they are enforced.
I plan to use various materials for my research. I will be looking at and analyzing the online documentation of the human trafficking law, created in 2003, as well as federal cases that are relevant to federal laws surrounding the subject. From there I plan to narrow in on specific cases in Seattle, much like Deshawn Clark’s case that we discussed in class, though FBI and other government reports. This might be difficult as I have only been able to find a few, but news papers also help to disclose information on cases that would be found in police or federal reports. Newspapers will definitely be my most useful resource. Within the articles there are often clips of interviews, or even full length pieces that ARE interviews with victims or those being prosecuted. Those will be helpful in painting a picture of both sides of the story.

Final Paper:

kramos_efs_FinalPaper.doc

Bibliography:

kramos_efs_bibliography.doc

4) Sex Trafficking in Seattle

Jernard Jarreau

external image cni-not-for-sale-photo.jpg

Since I’m not from the Seattle area, I didn’t realize that sex trafficking was a big issues in my new community. I wanted to do a research topic on sex trafficking in Seattle because I found it very interesting and wanted to find out what was going on in my community. When I first did information on this topic I found out that Seattle is ranked 3rd in the country in underage in sex trafficking, and some studies that have said they are 300-500 children per year that are prostituted in king county.
In my full research paper I will like to address some of the following questions: How does young girls get introduce to that life in the Seattle area? What’s the average age they are starting at? What are their family roles in this situation? What Seattle is doing about this problem?
When I was in the library on Monday I found some resources on my research topic in an article I found in the Seattle Times website “Wash. teen escapes sex-trafficking ring” by KATHIE DURBIN. In this article I read that a young girl from Vancouver, Washington that had just turned 18 that had got recruited by two young men that wore nice jewelry, and had a nice car brainwashed the young girl and got her to ride to Seattle for the night. When the two young men got her to come to come to Seattle that night and told her to spend a night and she would have her own room. This was all a lie just to try and get her to become a prostitute and start pimping her, but she escape away and got back to her normal life. This goes back to what I wanted to know about how young girls get introduce that life.
In class yesterday we were given an article about a young gang related man name Deshawn Clark who was affiliated with the gang called the “MOBB.” They get young girls and pimp them and turned them into prostitutes and get their profit, and barely give the girls any money. In class our guest speaker gave us some information on this recent case. One of the things she mentioned was that Clark’s mother was trying to defend him and actually on his side and also being charged with tampering, and threatening the witness who was going to testify against her two sons. This relates to my topic because one of the questions I asked was what are the family roles in situations like this.